Page 66 of Storm to Victory
“Very well, but I’ll set aside as much food as I think we can spare.” Pretty Face’s gaze didn’t waver, even facing Fieran’s dacha. “You’ll need to keep moving without taking time for finding food.”
“Those with you have been starved long enough.” Dacha’s voice held a tight, strange note to it. “I will not take food from them.”
As subtly as he could, Fieran nudged Pretty Face with an elbow. This wasn’t a discussion Pretty Face was going to win. He would be better off just quietly stuffing a bag of food into thetruck set aside for Fieran and Dacha rather than arguing about it.
Perhaps Pretty Face realized that because he nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“And take these with you as well.” Dacha gathered up the notebooks and handed them to Pretty Face. “Along with any other records we can find. Place them directly in the hands of either King Averett or Princess Jalissa. They will know what to do with them.”
“Yes, sir.” Pretty Face took the notebooks, gripping them to his chest.
One of the other officers rolled up the map, tucking it under an arm.
“I would like all of us to leave in less than an hour.” Dacha’s tone held a finality, indicating that the meeting was over.
Within a few moments, everyone began to disperse. The young ogre woman moved off, speaking in low tones with her brother. Dacha mumbled something about searching for more records and maps, and some of the other officers shouted over to Pretty Face how they were going to start loading the trucks.
Fieran fell into step with Pretty Face, clapping him on the shoulder as they left the room. “I hate sending you off like this. Again. Make it to the Escarlish border this time, okay?”
“You got it.” Pretty Face grinned, though it faded only a moment later. “I only made it about an hour down the road last time. Ran straight into one of the patrols coming to investigate the crash. The next thing I knew, I was shipped here.”
Fieran had to squeeze his eyes shut for a moment as that sank in. All that time when he and the others were hoping and waiting for Pretty Face to return, he’d already been caught. He’d already been here, suffering these horrible conditions. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get to you sooner. I only found out about this place about a week and a half ago.”
“I know. I suspected the Alliance didn’t know about it. Or knew about it and didn’t dare bomb it.” As they stepped outside, Pretty Face gave a harsh laugh, turning his face toward the sky. “We kept hoping you’d bomb it. Every day we’d search the skies, hoping we’d see an Alliance squadron overhead.”
Fieran swallowed at the tightness in his throat, hearing what Pretty Face wasn’t telling him. A bombing like that would have killed many of the prisoners, and yet those very prisoners hoped for such a death if it meant this facility would be shut down and their suffering would be at an end.
Instead of probing that further, Fieran waved a hand at the factory building, the smokestacks no longer belching smoke. “What did they have you making?”
“The power cells to hold the magic they stole. We tried to sabotage them as best we could, although the Mongavarians would retaliate by beating or shooting some of us if they caught us doing it.” Pretty Face’s jaw worked, his eyes getting that hollow, haunted look again. “We were trying to save as many ogres as we could. The Mongavarian magicians could wield the deflecting magic once it was ripped from an ogre so one ogre’s magic could be used many times before exhausted. But the magic that interacts with the heart of magic could only be used in one machine. One ogre had to die for every machine.”
Fieran swallowed, thinking of all the machines that had taken down the Wall. An ogre had died to create each of those machines.
Pretty Face had seen things while held captive. Things Fieran couldn’t fully comprehend since he hadn’t experienced anything like that.
His dacha likely understood far more than he did. Dacha had, after all, been captured twice by the trolls. Tortured twice by them as well.
Pretty Face’s voice roughened still further. “After the Wall came down, we knew we had to do whatever it took to prevent more of those machines from reaching the front lines, even if that meant dying ourselves.”
“Thank you. You likely saved Alliance lives, not to mention the lives of the ogres here.” Fieran held Pretty Face’s gaze as best he could.
Pretty Face nodded, though he looked away to stare at Ludin. “I hope so.”
There was nothing else Fieran could say to that. Pretty Face saw all the lives he hadn’t been able to save rather than the ones he had.
Time to lighten the conversation. Fieran elbowed Pretty Face lightly as they set out again. “The squadron had one thing right in all our guesses on what you were up to. Was I imagining something between you and a certain ogre lady?”
The look in Pretty Face’s eyes warmed, even though he shook his head. “It’s hard to explain, if you weren’t here. We were just trying to survive. It bonds people. But we both know it isn’t something that’s going to last. Once this is over, I’ll return to the squadron, and Inirth will return to her homeland.”
Fieran clapped Pretty Face on the back again, not sure what to say to that. Even if this wasn’t something that would last, he found himself strangely proud of Pretty Face. He’d come a long way from the flighty lord’s son who flirted with anything in a skirt to a leader here who had fallen for a young woman who didn’t fit the conventional Escarlish standards of beauty.
Pretty Face shook himself and started walking again. “Anyway, your turn. What’s been happening with the squadron? And Merrik? Have you heard from him?”
“He’s getting around well on his prosthetic leg and already back with the squadron. He’s leading the squadron at the moment.” Fieran had to look away, his throat going a littletight at the thought of Merrik flying into battle without him. “Rothilion is off on a mission so secret even I don’t know the details of it.”
Fieran gave Pretty Face a few more random tidbits on the squadron, and each one seemed to relax Pretty Face more. As if just hearing about them was bringing him back to who he had been rather than who he’d become to survive this place.
Several of the Alliance officers hurried toward them, one of them calling out for “Jim.”
